Silent Voices

Chapter Nine

Connie hadn’t watched the news on TV since the day Elias died. She was always frightened that she might catch a glimpse of herself: pale and inarticulate at that first press conference, or running down the steps of the court in the rain at the end of the case, knowing even then that this was nowhere near over. Her preferred viewing now was light and escapist; she watched documentaries about celebrities, or selling houses or moving to the sun. Every evening, once Alice was in bed and asleep, she would pour herself a glass of wine, eat a supper that took no preparation and lose herself in the inanities on the screen. She had survived another day. Alice had survived another day. That alone was worth celebrating. Boredom was a small price to pay.

It was almost ten when her ex-husband phoned. So few people called her these days that the sound was a shock. She found that she was trembling.

‘Yes?’ There had been threatening phone calls, but they’d dwindled away to nothing. Perhaps the newspaper article commemorating Elias’s death had stirred things up again.

‘It’s me.’ Then when she didn’t answer. ‘Frank.’ A sharp bark, as if she were deaf or very old.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know. What do you want?’ She supposed it was about taking Alice away on holiday. He’d been talking about camping in France in June. She’d agreed of course, she couldn’t deprive her daughter of a treat like that, but all the time there was a niggle at the back of her mind. A very un-adult envy. Why can’t I come too?

‘I wondered if you’d heard. About Jenny Lister.’

‘What about her?’ Jenny had never been her favourite person. On the surface friendly enough. Supportive. But underneath quite ruthless. Steely even. Given to principles.

‘She’s dead. Murdered.’

Connie’s first reaction – absolutely appalling of course – was that it served priggish Jenny Lister sodding well right. Then that this might make life very awkward. What if the business with Elias was raked up all over again? Only then came a moment of guilt, because deep down she knew that Jenny had dealt with her as well as any manager would, and that with someone else in charge of the case the experience would have been no different.

Frank was still talking. ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you. But I thought you’d want to know.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thanks. I hadn’t heard.’ She replaced the receiver. The television was still yattering away in the background and she turned it off. Then all the noises came from outside: the burn running over the pebbles at the end of the garden, and the leaves of the apple tree against the upstairs window. And the voices that were inside her head.

She shivered. She could smell the damp in Mallow Cottage now, imagined it oozing through the stone floor and running down the lime-washed walls, green and slimy like the stones in the burn. She went upstairs, pulled the duvet from her bed and took it down to the living room, poured another glass of wine, one more than her usual daily allowance. Curled up on the short sofa, her duvet tucked around her, she relived her memories of Jenny and Elias, grieving for both of them as best as she could. Not doing a good job of it, but at least making an attempt for the first time. She was still there when it was getting light, and by then the wine bottle was empty.

Jenny Lister had employed her. Connie had got into social work in her late twenties after a spell, ironically, working on a local paper. What had attracted her? The usual ideals, she supposed. The romantic notion that she might make a difference in people’s lives. Throughout the training she’d had an image of this family held together through her support: a tousle-haired boy and a girl with big sad eyes climbing on her knee, thanking her for helping their mummy and daddy. All crap of course, but she’d always needed a bit of praise to keep her going. Jenny had been quite good at the praise thing, at least at the beginning.

Once a month they’d have supervision sessions in Jenny’s office. Real coffee and nice biscuits – sometimes home-made. Jenny was one of those superwomen who baked at weekends and went to the theatre and read proper books. The sort of woman Frank’s new lover might grow into. And Connie would talk through her caseload. They were part of the child-protection team – the most exciting and dramatic area of social work. No incontinent old ladies or smelly, schizophrenic men for them. Jenny was in charge of fostering and adoption, of assessing and training prospective adoptive parents, but most of Connie’s work was following up kids on the ‘at risk’ register. Some of them would end up being fostered or adopted of course, but while Jenny chatted to nice middle-class foster parents in leafy suburbs on her home visits, Connie’s took her to the skankiest estates in the North-East. All dog shit and graffiti, and not a tousle-haired boy or sad-eyed girl in sight. Sometimes she thought Jenny didn’t have a clue what it was like.

At first during supervision Jenny said all the right things: ‘Sounds as if you’ve developed a really good relationship with that mum, and a great idea to go with her to the toddler group.’ And: ‘Absolutely right to insist on talking to the class teacher.’ So Connie would come out, high on caffeine and approval. Later, though, Connie’s caseload increased and the visits to families became more routine, so the clients sometimes blurred in her head – was Leanne the one with the headlice or was that the flat with the Rottweiler chained in the kitchen? Then Jenny frowned more often, and Connie found herself on the defensive. She always made sure her notes were in order – she’d been a journo, hadn’t she? She could tell a good story – but sometimes, visiting the flat where the teenage mother had moved in with that aggressive bloke with the weird stary eyes, she was overwhelmed with relief when there was no answer to her knocking. And even though she thought she’d caught a glimpse of a woman’s face at the bedroom window, she jotted No response in her diary and moved on to the next call of the day. She wasn’t paid enough to put up with a load of abuse. On this estate even the cops hunted in pairs.

It had been a relief when she’d found out she was pregnant with Alice. Had she become pregnant just because it gave her an excuse to have a break from work? Frank hadn’t been overjoyed when he’d first heard the news. She’d cooked him a meal, lit candles, bought flowers and all he could say was: ‘Hardly brilliant timing, babe.’ He’d just taken over as artistic director of the theatre, had taken a pay cut when he gave up his work as a lecturer at Newcastle College. Perhaps he’d already started to screw his new little woman. Perhaps that was why he’d looked so uncomfortable.

She’d supported his decision to leave the college, even though it meant she’d have to stick at the social work, even though the thought of going into work every day, climbing the concrete steps to the bare and mucky flats, facing pathetic mothers and slobby fathers made her feel ill when she woke up every morning. She’d understood what it was like for him to do a job he hated. And she hadn’t had the courage to scream: ‘What about me? How do I escape?’ Had she guessed how close she was to losing him, that one more demand would send him into the arms of the skinny designer about whose work he raved? But at least the pregnancy meant she could take maternity leave, catch her breath. Push the panic away for a while. She could order her world, buy a pram and lay Babygros out in a row on the painted white chest. Frank had felt obliged to spoil her, had become attached, despite himself, to the baby kicking inside her stomach.

When she returned to work, Jenny had been solicitous. She’d cooed over the pictures of Alice. ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Lots of new mums find it too stressful, too close to home. There are other branches of the profession, just as satisfying, but not so demanding.’ Incontinent old ladies. Care in the community.

Connie had refused to take the offered escape route. Why? Pride, and because the alternative would be even worse. Because she thought motherhood had given her an insight, an empathy she’d been lacking before. She’d explained this to Jenny, in a stumbling, halting way, and got a huge smile as a reward. ‘Fine then. Let’s just go for it.’ And the following week Connie had been introduced to Elias’s mum.

Mattie had been frail and screwed up. She’d spent most of her life in care, rejected apparently by her student single mother, surviving temporary foster parent after foster parent. Never, for some reason, placed for adoption. It seemed none of the breakdowns in placement had been down to Mattie; from all accounts she was pliable, eager to please. At sixteen she’d been found a flat. Not on a brutal estate, but in a small new housing-association development. That had been down to Saint Jenny, who’d fought Mattie’s corner from the start. At seventeen the girl discovered she was pregnant. When Connie first met her, Elias had been six. Totally gorgeous to look at. Obviously mixed-race with coffee-coloured skin and black hair. It wasn’t tousled, but very curly; still, he was the child of Connie’s student fantasies, the child she would rescue, whose saviour she would become. The boy’s father played no part in the story.

Mattie had survived without much social-services support while her child was a toddler. She took her baby to the Sure Start nursery close to her home. He had regular check-ups at the clinic. If anything, the records showed, she was an over-anxious mother, neurotic even. Compared with the drug-taking, irresponsible teenage mums with whom the health-care professionals often dealt, she was a doddle. A delight. Not the sharpest tool in the box, they said, but a devoted mother.

Then Mattie fell in love. Connie never discovered quite how the couple met. She asked, but Mattie blushed and stammered and said: ‘Oh, you knaa, we just kinda bumped into each other.’ And the man, the object of her worship, was never really around for Connie to ask. Maybe a dating agency? The small ads of the local paper? Though Connie had never seen Mattie read, except a picture book in a stumbling way to Elias, because at the Sure Start she’d been told it was a good thing to do. Perhaps Michael Morgan had seen her in the street and picked her up. She’d grown into a bonny young woman, if you liked your females helpless and waif-like. And if Frank was anything to go by, many men did enjoy that sort of look.

Everyone agreed Michael was weird. But harmless, everyone had also agreed that at first. Connie was only assigned the case because Jenny was careful, and had a personal interest in Mattie and because, as Jenny said, All the research shows if you bring a strange man into a family you change the dynamic. Best just keep an eye until things settle down. And probably because she thought Connie could do with an easy caseload on her return from maternity leave.

Jenny had frowned again when Connie said Michael was weird. ‘In what way weird?’ Maybe it was because the word was so loaded with judgement and Jenny was a good liberal, or maybe she always frowned when she was puzzled, and she genuinely wanted Connie to explain.

Connie had struggled to articulate her feelings. ‘He’s well educated, works in that complementary-therapy centre in Tynemouth. Acupuncture. I wondered why he’d take up with Mattie and the baby.’

‘Someone looking out for lost souls?’ And Jenny had laughed. ‘We social workers know all about that.’

‘He hardly speaks.’ Connie had felt the need to continue, to express her unease about the man. Making it sound as though she’d done an in-depth assessment, when she’d only met him the once. ‘He just sits there, smiling. I wondered if he was on something. Or if he’s ill. Mad.’

‘No criminal record.’ And Jenny had frowned again. ‘But let’s keep an eye on the situation. Trust your instinct, eh?’

So Connie had continued to call, glad of the excuse to go actually, because Mattie’s flat provided an oasis of calm in the round of visits to swearing parents, flats that smelled of piss and worse, babies whose bums fell out of stinking nappies. These days Mattie made herbal tea in big mugs with sunflowers printed on them. Her home had always been tidy, but now there were books on the shelves. No fiction, but volumes on religion and complementary medicine. And there were rugs on the floors, flowers in a vase. But no toys, Connie noticed. No mess. By now Alice was a toddler and their house looked as if a hurricane had passed through. She mentioned it to Mattie, who’d looked unflustered. ‘Michael doesn’t like clutter,’ she’d said. The next time Connie went, she chose a time when Elias would be home from school. He was sitting at the table doing homework, looked up when Connie went in, but didn’t smile. Still no toys.

Frank had left six months after Alice’s second birthday. His departure was completely unexpected to Connie. Recently there’d been no rows. He was occasionally irritated by the chaos into which their domestic life had descended, but knew better than to blame her solely for that. She’d thought things were fine, was even starting secretly to plan another baby. Perhaps he’d managed to live with her reasonably harmoniously because he knew one day soon he’d leave, because the skinny designer consoled him during the long Saturday afternoons when Connie played with Alice and did the ironing, the afternoons when he told her that he was rehearsing the cast. Rehearsing, she supposed now, for a life of conjugal bliss.

Connie had held things together for the sake of Alice and to keep up appearances at work. No way was she going to break down in Saint Jenny’s office. She didn’t need pity. ‘An amicable split,’ she told her colleagues. That was the same day Elias’s class teacher rang Connie to express her concern about the boy.